Posted on 04/12/2015 4:35:34 PM PDT by Smokin' Joe
MONROVIA, Liberia — As bodies littered the streets and the sick lay dying in front of overwhelmed clinics last year, President Obama ordered the largest American intervention ever in a global health crisis, hoping to stem the deadliest Ebola epidemic in history.
But after spending hundreds of millions of dollars and deploying nearly 3,000 troops to build Ebola treatment centers, the United States ended up creating facilities
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Since the origin of the pathogens was outside the US, I'd call that "imported".
YMMV.
No, Ebola was not imported, except to research laboratories over the decades, some Americans came home for medical treatment of the disease.
One traveler who was infected came into the U.S.
Still trying to make a mountain out something that never came to be a mountain?
The screaming crazies and the hysterics were wrong, and they were sure nasty at everyone who has proven to have been right.
Did we even lose any Americans to Ebola, I don remember, but I can show you the estimates on the threads here of tens of millions, of half of our population, and even up to 75% of the entire human race.
As for hysteria, you are looking back with the following developments since the beginning of the outbreak:
A far better understanding of the method of transmission of the disease.
Although it was touted as being transferred by "bodily fluids", at the time that was a buzzword for sexual contact. While that is one way, obviously it is not the only way, and sexual contact was not necessary. Ironically, new cases are springing up in Africa because of sexual contact and the survival of the virus in semen for 60+ days even after the patient tests otherwise ebola free.
We have found out that the disease can be transferred by fomites, although there are apparently serious limitations on the effectiveness of that method of transmission. Those limits were unknown at that time.
Treatments developed include drugs, serum based treatments from blood donations from survivors, and even a vaccine.
Geeez, diptheria isn't so scary now, but tell someone that in 1905 and they'd consider you a nut.
There has been a great deal of progress made in treatment and prevention of the disease, which simply was not there, and that progress has been made on the back of learning more about the disease, an area in which we have made great strides. The initial mortality rate during the outbreak was pushing 70+%, but has been reduced by those new treatments to below 40%. Still pretty deadly when you consider the Spanish (1918) Flu only killed 2.5% of those infected, but less than originally anticipated (if the numbers are correct).
The screaming crazies and the hysterics were wrong, and they were sure nasty at everyone who has proven to have been right.
I'd be damned grateful that people you describe as "screaming crazies and hysterics" were wrong. I have little doubt they are greatly relieved this did not turn into a Civilization ending event.
I'd be thanking The Almighty that so much progress was made in fighting the disease, and that fewer died, rather than engaging in the anthropocentric hubris of "I told you so". Erring toward caution with something deadly seldom proves fatal, and next time those you describe as "hysterics" just might be right.
...but I can show you the estimates on the threads here of tens of millions, of half of our population, and even up to 75% of the entire human race.
I have little doubt those are with global travel completely unrestricted and no medical intervention, but by all means, provide a link.
Who did those patients import the disease to, who kept it, who was it passed on to?
Why are you working so hard to justify such silliness as we saw on these threads?
Importing Ebola would have been what we did over the decades when we were actually importing it, as a disease, and to use and study, Ebola has been in America for many years.
As far as hysteria, I am talking about the hysterical nutcases who were brow beating the people here who were remaining sane and rational. Some here were totally wrong, and some of us were totally right.
Here is hysteria, and you can see Rand Paul’s hysteria and ignorance of the military in post 14.
I have lot’s of links, but since you were on almost all of those threads, how is it that you don’t remember any of them? Weren’t you collecting them all?
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/3191066/posts?page=1#1
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3214467/posts?page=7#7
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/bloggers/3204947/posts?page=23#23
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/3210773/posts?page=50#50
If anyone was wrong, it was the “experts”. Some of us made the mistake of believing the idiots in govt and media. Was the military in charge? They didn’t know what the heck to do except waste $$$.
Actually the true idiots were the raving nuts on the threads, predicting the apocalypse and 10s of millions dead.
What did the military do wrong? The Army has been leading in Ebola help for 40 years now, and they are doing a fine job again it seems.
Look at post 14 to see an idiot speaking his thoughts.
Thanks for the ping!
Because some day, some complacent bastard will succeed in getting most of us killed.
Many of us were not saying it was anything like TEOTWAWKI, but let's not be idiots about a disease with what had been a 90% (known) kill rate, with more unknowns than solid knowledge.
Yes, I compiled a hell of a lot of links to stories about the disease, and this particular outbreak. That doesn't mean I agree with every post, nor every article.
Hell, I did not have time to read them all because I was working 14 hour days in the midst of the highest media traffic on the event.
I just wanted to chronicle the progress of the outbreak which was growing in size and scope and let people make up their own minds as to their personal risk.
If you lived in the middle of a neighborhood where no one had been to Africa in the past year, your risk was pretty low, compared to a health care worker in a hospital ER where people just in from overseas were common.
There are too many variables to assess risk for everyone, so let them do it for themselves.
As for being imported, the known human cases of Ebola Zaire or variants in the US prior to the outbreak were zero. None. Not one. Americans were, as a population, unexposed to the pathogen. No way to assess outcome, except to go by what little was known, and those were very high mortality rates, indeed.
After one person came in with the disease, and several others (not all Americans) were brought in for treatment, I believe the final number was eight, one died, seven recovered. The airplanes rigged for isolation were making trips after the lid was clamped down on stories about the disease (which persists in Africa). That was the purpose of Obama's Ebola Tsar--to spike stories about the outbreak in the US.
Now, if you want to trust the government to tell you the truth about things, that's up to you. Frankly, I trust the government to lie to me, even when it isn't necessary.
Your work on the threads and links were very helpful to us all....you were the “touch pad” for the rest of us as we gathered information about Ebola and for that were able to be well informed.
Hats off to you and then some!
Thanks. In all fairness, lots of other FReepers found the articles, I just posted the links.
Yes...but we knew ‘who’ to go to ..”in all fairness”.
Even our first Ebola outbreak in America during the 1980s didn't result in any deaths because all the Americans infected survived.
"In late November 1989, Ebola virus was isolated from cynomolgus monkeys (Macaca fascicularis) imported into the United States from the Philippines via Amsterdam and New York."--"Initial testing revealed something much worse: Ebola, specifically the Zaire strain, which had a 90 percent fatality rate in humans. Four workers at the quarantine facility tested positive for exposure to the virus.
Amazingly, they never even got sick.
Researchers eventually realized they were dealing with a different strain, one now known as Ebola-Reston."
As far as this recent episode with Ebola, what infections resulted from Americans coming home for medical treatment (I'm not aware of any) and how many people who were brought in for treatment were not Americans or already living here, none? How many American citizens died from Ebola, none? How many people died around the world outside of Africa, 4 or 5?
You still seem determined to find a mountain somewhere in what didn't even turn out to be molehill.
Pretty piss poor argument, really. Ebola reston is NOT the same thing as Ebola zaire. Ebola reston infects and kills lower primates, but not humans.
Of the forms which infect and sicken humans (four out of five of the known Ebola species), none of them was present outside a BSL-4 lab prior to the most recent outbreak.
You still seem determined to find a mountain somewhere in what didn't even turn out to be molehill.
There are enough dead Africans to build a sizeable pile of corpses (over 10,000). Some molehill. They are still dying of Ebola over there.
Piss poor argument about what, describing what it means to actually “import” Ebola instead of someone coming home to be treated for the disease? And do you actually read our posts? “Researchers eventually realized they were dealing with a different strain, one now known as Ebola-Reston.”
You so wanted something massive and world changing, and you didn’t get it.
As far as this recent episode with Ebola, what infections resulted from Americans coming home for medical treatment (I’m not aware of any) and how many people who were brought in for treatment were not Americans or already living here, none? How many American citizens died from Ebola, none? How many people died around the world outside of Africa, 4 or 5?
You still seem determined to find a mountain somewhere in what didn’t even turn out to be molehill, 10,000 dead in Africa, that is your big time disease, that was the end of the world scenario that you want to play up for America, where we lost zero American citizens, and only two people who came here sick?
Wow. You're not only a mind-reader, you are 100% wrong. Did you read my post where I described Ebola reston as the one (of five filoviruses in the Ebola genus) which does not adversely affect humans? Really.
Why are you so determined to keep arguing about Ebola?
You fear mongers were wrong, your moment has passed to keep attacking people for being correct.
Here is a thread from August of 2014 when some of us trying to introduce sanity, and we kept running into this arguing.
“Renowned neurosurgeon and possible 2016 presidential hopeful, Dr. Benjamin Carson criticized the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Monday for bringing two Ebola infected missionaries to the U.S. for treatment, citing the highly contagious and deadly nature of the disease.
“Why would we bring that into our country? Why would we expose ourselves when we already know that there are problems that can occur and have occurred,” said Carson, who is a former director of Pediatric Neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins University and Hospital, in an interview with Newsmax TV.
“Ebola is a terrifying disease. If you don’t treat it, close to 90 percent of the people will die,” said Carson.”
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3190178/posts
Carson was right. Untreated, the mortality rate from Ebola zaire is approximately 90%. What did he say that was wrong, exactly? The two missionaries were just two of those brought in.
Carson was an idiot, and obviously wrong.
Read the thread, the arguments are there, except that now there is no question of how wrong he was to want to forbid Americans being allowed to come home for medical treatment.
No. Carson was right to be concerned. Anything which kills 10000 people out of 25000 people who get it is something to be concerned about.
The US took no measures to keep the disease out.
The CDC protocols for dealing with the disease got two people infected. Bravo! Keystone cops in scrubs.
All they did was bury the news and spike the stories.
The outbreak has diminished now, but is still going on. People are still dying of this stuff. We were damned lucky, yes lucky, it didn't get over here aside from a few cases (Duncan and the nurses)--not counting the ones who came over on the isolation plane.
Yes Carson was an idiot. Guns and Ebola, the guy was idiotic on both.
You can’t make a mountain out of something from the past that never even became a molehill, it is too late for your fear mongering, screaming that if we let Americans come home for medical treatment, that thousands and millions of us are going to die.
We did what any sane person would of course do, and nothing came of it, the Americans were treated and released.
Why don’t you get on that old thread and tell everyone how many Americans died because intelligent, caring, sane people ignored the idiot, you can post about how it swept our cities and killed thousands and millions of us, and how we are all living on canned food now with plastic on our windows.
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